A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar (18 page)

‘In Yemen, where there are many crumbling walls and empty spaces, the words are political or religious. I have always wondered why the Kufic forms could not be extended into drawings, jokes, tags?’

He stopped. She was nodding, listening, but he couldn’t explain it to her further. Why he has this compulsion to write out sections from ‘The Book of Animals’. Because it is ancient, scientific, anecdotal and funny? Because it is not a slogan?

‘For my own amusement, I suppose.’

‘So, if you don’t mind me asking, are you now officially on the run?’

‘Yes.’ He smiled again at her asking permission to ask. ‘I suppose so. Now that Anwar has made me look more glamorous and exciting than I am, the idiot. Or if not that, then the immigration people will want me.’

‘What will you do?’

He shrugged. That was the question. There was a buzzing, this time from Frieda’s thigh. Tayeb watched as she pulled her phone out from her pocket and looked at it. She turned to Tayeb.

‘I don’t mind if you smoke in the kitchen,’ she said, ‘near the window.’

‘Allah was wise when he guided me to you. You read my mind as well as give me refreshments.’ He pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket.

Five trains passed each other simultaneously below Tayeb as he blew smoke out into the dull Victoria air. Two trains in one direction, three in the other, then, suddenly, it was dead quiet. He could hear her talking in the other room, she was trying to keep her voice low, but it was clearly an argument. What must it be like to own this flat? To have a room above a railway line to keep for ever? He had been hounded out of his own country for writing obscenities in classical calligraphy: an unforgivable sin. And for filming the police; it was not advisable to make marks and to witness. He threw his cigarette stub down towards the silvery fence that lined the track. He should go, he knew. The image of the two men – Matthew and Graham – came to his mind, and then a white-sweat feeling of dismay.

He had once been approached similarly in Sana’a, a lifetime ago. He had been standing with his camera, filming a piece of graffiti on the wall behind the small alley that was used as a toilet by tea-house customers, just inside Bab-al-Yaman. Running his camera slowly along the wall to catch the words painted in rangy Arabic. As he did so, a short man, his head wrapped up in his somata, his sandals almost devoured by dust, hissed at him. Tayeb had immediately put his camera into his inside coat pocket and walked off, entering the silver souq quickly. The man followed, though. He thought Tayeb a homosexual, he supposed.

Tayeb walked fast towards the Great Mosque. He had heard from his brothers of men approaching other men in the souqs and, if refused, they would threaten to announce that person as a homosexual to the world, or they would demand enormous bribes. The sentence for such actions in Yemen was the death penalty. Sana’a is a maze, a hive that can protect. It is an alphabet city, words on the walls, and lost letters everywhere. The walls are layered with continuous scratches of ancient and new handwriting. Tayeb could have filmed and photographed the walls of Sana’a for a decade, if he hadn’t been forced to leave. He had started to believe that the messages on the walls were for him: come this way. Left. Right. Down here. That’s it. Come with me.

The man had followed him through the vegetable market, but tripped over the old qashshamah, crashing into her produce: bundles of ansif, parsley, tomatoes, fennel and herbs. From the ground the man shouted to him. Several women halted their shopping, looking through the gauze of their niqabs at him. Tayeb ran into a vein-like passageway that passed below tall, disjointed houses all leaning into each other like old friends. He kept going, without looking back, running like a dog following a scent for food past closed doors, abaya stands, past the medical souqs, until he looked up and saw that he had lost the man, but he was also lost himself.

His mother always told him that he had lucky bones and no djinns in his shadow but he didn’t imagine this is what it meant to be lucky.

‘I have an idea,’ Frieda said, standing behind him in the kitchen, leaning against the door. He turned and looked at her, hoping he hadn’t breathed cigarette smoke into her kitchen. She was thin, attractive, though she seemed nervous. Or perhaps, if not nervous, then ill at ease with herself. She acted confident, but it wasn’t very convincing. She smiled at him.

‘Of somewhere you can stay, just for one week. But it might help.’

‘Oh? I can’t stay here, you are very kind, but I cannot intrude.’ Tayeb stood up straight, in truth he was a little shocked at her suggestion.

‘No, not here,’ she said. Her voice was quiet and delicate, yet she was curiously unfazed by a strange man in her kitchen. ‘Another flat, there is another one. I have it for one week, well, five days now. I am . . . clearing it out. You can help me maybe, in return for the favour of staying there?’

Tayeb looked at her quiet, wide face and thin lips. He was hot with relief. His psoriasis rose up as if trying to take him to the end of his own endurance.

‘Five days will give me time to work out what to do. I am so grateful.’

‘Good,’ Frieda said, and to avoid the awkwardness of discussing what he would do about sleeping somewhere that night, she said, ‘Why don’t we go there now?’

How to Make Progress:
The oftener discouraged, the oftener the opportunity to hope again. The art of bicycling is a purely mechanical attainment; and though its complications may at first seem hopeless, sufficient practice will result in final mastery.

17.
A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes

July 9th

I must record the last three days but I shirk from the task. Then – think of myself at fifty wondering, what was it like? Was it really like that? – Think of Mr Hatchett who awaits my Guide. I am a disgrace.

According to Father Don Carlo a man may lose his life by crossing the street at midday in July, so it was a surprise when Millicent insisted we go into the desert to see the travelling theatre troupe.

‘It’s the opportunity I’ve been waiting for,’ she said, hopping about the courtyard like a chaffinch. ‘The performance runs for three days; I will request permission for us to attend from the General.’

‘But Millicent – the heat.’

To my dismay, we were granted permission to go, as long as Hai and Li accompanied us. Now I cannot help but think that we would have been much wiser to have remained in our home.

Just beyond the boundary of Kashgar’s Old Town, on the other side of the disease-breeding River Tooman, a track runs into the desert. It appears desolate, but like most of these seemingly unused pathways, there is a destination. It is, in fact, the beginning of a long tramp to a temple in the desert: the Temple of Red Rock Ladder, so named because it is situated at the base of a wide plateau of curiously staggered cliffs. Their formation falls in such a jagged way that they create the perfect silhouette in the bright, empty sky, of a staircase, or ladder, leading up to Heaven. Presiding over the temple is an ancient abbot who has never once cut his beard or hair. His head hangs with twisted rope-like hair giving him an unreal look of a medusa. Indeed, he is affectionately known as Abbot Snakehead.

By the time we reached the plain of the Temple of Red Rock Ladder throngs of families were in full festival regalia. We were forced to set up camp in an exposed patch, close to the main thoroughfare that stretched down to a makeshift theatre built in front of the temple. Father Don Carlo joined us and together we set up a table and arranged bibles, some translated quotes and his beautifully decorated pamphlets in a fan.

The first afternoon we simply waited for the actors to arrive. Lizzie darted about with her Leica, trailed by children. Millicent and Father Don Carlo distributed the pamphlets to passers-by, many of whom stopped to peer at us. Drumming came from every direction, and every now and again natives would begin to dance with alarming, spontaneous movements. I held Ai-Lien wrapped and close to me as the crowds flew around us.

Eventually, in the full blaze of the afternoon, the actors came, looking more like prisoners than a theatrical cast. They carried trunks on their shoulders and they spilled over with stage properties and costumes. Musicians followed, even more unsightly and haphazard than the actors. They seemed to be made up of a whole range of nationalities, some of them – the ones carrying pipes and cymbals – had the pointed chins and the pigtails of the Mongolians, others were Turkic-looking, some barely Eastern at all. They came with huge drums, and flutes and several long-headed stringed instruments with wide bowls. They waved shakers made from sticks and nails and jangling bits of metal, and primitive tambourines. Lizzie was like a sprat, flitting here and there. When the animal handlers came she went as close as she dared, photographing a wretched-looking tiger attached by a great chain to a man with a long pigtail; several yaks; and the five or six donkeys laden with cases and packages and bundles tied up Kashgari-style in scarves of bright colours that followed.

It wasn’t until the light began to fade in earnest, and torches were lit around the edges of the stage, that there were clear signs of the show actually beginning.

We took it in turns to man the tent and to watch the performances, but it was almost impossible to understand the thread of the narrative. A minuscule Maestro character made jokes, in a fluid range of languages, slipping from Turki to Chinese to various dialects, nodding and curtseying, charming the audience. We ate well: lamb kebabes, cucumbers with red peppers, jiaozi pancakes, steamed bread and rice. Occasionally, unfathomably, the crowd laughed at the creatures on the stage. The sights and sounds and lights and songs and clashes of drums and cymbals and storming out of Emperors and lonely warriors left me dizzy, almost hallucinating. I returned to our makeshift tent to add water to the dried food for Ai-Lien, and had an uncomfortable night’s sleep. When we awoke at dawn there was a crowd of people standing and squatting around our tent watching us.

By the second evening, our supplies were proving inadequate. We had finished all of our bread and were reduced to making a paste of flour mixed with oil, pulled into strips and boiled in water. At dusk I returned from a scavenging hunt amongst the food vendors who had all increased their prices enormously, and was surprised to see Khadega in the corner of our tent talking to Millicent.

‘Eva,’ Millicent called, ‘Khadega needs to come and live with us for a time.’ Khadega was sitting in a squat position, with her face covered.

‘Will Mohammed allow it?’

‘It is no longer safe for Khadega to be in her home.’ Lizzie came in then, tired-looking. She glanced at Millicent with Khadega, holding her hand.

‘What’s happening?’

‘Someone has informed Mohammed that we are attempting to convert Khadega.’ Millicent pulled out a Hatamen. ‘It is not safe for her, he is angry. Rami has sent Khadega to us, asking for a haven.’

‘Is he here now?’

‘Yes, but Rami heard that we are here, deposited Khadega, and has steered him away.’ Millicent laughed. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

‘Millicent – this is not a situation that you should be amused at. She will lose her family,’ Lizzie said.

‘She has chosen a new family, a new way.’ Millicent squeezed a territorial grip on Khadega’s hand and translated her words into Russian. Khadega sat next to Millicent with the atmosphere of a rescued cat: at once shivering, in recovery with wet fur, yet sitting like an Empress awaiting a party in her honour. Lizzie slumped on to the floor on the opposite side of the tent and focused on the business of pulling off her boots.

‘Lizzie, can I leave Ai-Lien in your care while I go and see the temple?’ I had a strong impulse to leave our tent. Khadega remained covered and cowed, but through her veils it was possible to see her eyes, too emotional and swilling for good sense. I rebuked myself. Khadega deserves freedom as much as the rest of us. Lizzie stretched her arms up for the baby and, as she did, I saw flashes of her younger self: Lizzie in the school room at the convent, refusing to say mass and Lizzie climbing a chestnut tree in Saint Omer, waving; Lizzie listening to a recital in Geneva. Hold my hand. A secret language: a cooo coroco pigeon song. Do not stop laughing in my ear. She took Ai-Lien to her chest and held her sweetly. This was the first time I have seen her do so.

It was almost dark. Various shrines were dotted about the temple grounds, each with a line of people queuing to light incense and receive their blessing. I wandered, watching the people solemnly light their sticks. The monotonous drone of the chanting priests created a confusion of sound in the air and the clapping of their oyster-shaped instruments provided a pulse. Worshippers flung themselves prostrate, cast down their money and sent prayers out.

The immense jagged, stair-like cliffs were in front of me. Before them, I felt that my own prayers, such as they might be called, were but dead leaves in a dying wind, achieving nothing. Through the flickering light and the gnats and the flies I saw Mohammed. His head was down, his hand on his beard, he was talking to several other Mohammedans. As I somehow knew he would, he looked up and directly at me.

I moved backwards and I saw him draw away from his company. Then, he was next to me. There was no choice but to acknowledge him as he swung round and stood in my path. He spoke quietly:

‘Khadega?’